Name it what you may, but meteorologist Eric Boldt calls it the temperature difference between the warm land and cold ocean. That causes the moisture over the sea to creep onto land and blanket the skies and our otherwise sunny dispositions.

So for just a moment, instead of complaining about the weather — as Mark Twain opined, you can’t do anything about it anyway — take a look at the sunny side of overcast weather.

First, of course, there are the bragging rights to East Coast friends and family.

Try telling your New York family how awful it is to live through 64-degree weather when they are wilting in temperatures that flirt with triple digits. Officials on the East Coast are asking people to cut down on air conditioning to stave off power outages, and we merely open our doors to let the cool air seep in.

While we don Ugg boots, they doff tank tops.

Although the gray weather doesn’t make for the best of beach days, for surfing it can help produce clean, glassy waves that are hard to come by when the wind is hammering the seas the rest of the year.

“If you want perfect glass in Southern California, you have to settle for overcast skies,” said Nathan Cool, a surf forecaster from Newbury Park.

And who slathers on sunscreen when you can’t see the sun?

“I like it because I’m an old white guy trying to stay out of the sun and I’m tired of going to the dermatologist,” said Bill Patzert, a climatologist with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. His own name for the phenomenon: July, Where is the Sky?

Let the tourists flock to California in the summer and try to soak up our sun. Locals know fall is the best time to hit the beach.

But sometimes too much of a good thing can be bad.

Yes, more moisture in the air means less watering for the rows of strawberries and flowers and avocados that make up the backbone of the county’s economy. And the workers who toil in the fields all day benefit from cooler temperatures instead of oppressive heat, said John Krist, CEO of the Farm Bureau of Ventura County.

But the cooler temperatures cause tomatoes and peppers to fruit later, delaying the harvest season. Pickers don’t like to pluck lemons from trees when it’s wet out because the dampness causes a cosmetic discoloration on the fruit’s skin.

So Krist’s term for the July weather? “Depressing.”

Even our fire-prone hills see only a small benefit from July’s wet blanket.

The damp air helps keep wildfires at bay, said Ventura County Fire Department Capt. Ron Oatman, but as soon as it goes away, officials are right back on high alert for that other Southern California weather phenomenon — fire season.

And that shouldn’t be that far off. It’s unusual but not unheard of to have the gloom last into July as a low-pressure system continues to push the wall of clouds inland. By the end of the week, we may once again see some sun.

So before the ashes start falling from the sky or the sun starts to burn your nose again, we can take a brief moment to appreciate the July Whatever You Call It.